Real estate investing is a fantastic way to build a stream of passive income and grow your wealth. Numerous studies have pointed out that real estate investing has created more millionaires throughout history than any other form of investing (like this one and this one). So why don’t more people do it?
I asked myself this very question a few years ago after talking to a group of friends about the success I’ve had with real estate, and listening to their reasons why they think it’s out of their reach.
A common theme among them was that they viewed it as something too difficult to learn and master. There were too many steps, the learning curve was steep and there was a lot of room for mistakes for somebody just starting out, especially when analyzing the financial performance of potential investment properties.
Traditionally, most investors used spreadsheets to do the math - which works only if you know what and how you’re calculating something. But if you don’t know that, it’s very easy to make mistakes and overlook things. And no one wants to make mathematical errors before a huge purchase like an investment property.
Where do I even begin?!
And that’s when I had the idea to build DealCheck – a cloud-based, easy-to-use property analysis tool for real estate investors and agents. I wanted to create a platform that would help new investors learn the ropes and avoid costly mistakes, but at the same time provide the flexibility to perform more advanced analysis with a click of a button.
Making real estate investing easier and more accessible.
I was working as a front-end engineer at the time, so I knew I could build the UI myself, but what about the back-end, data storage, authentication, and a bunch of other things you need for a full-functioning cloud app?
I didn’t know anybody I could bring on as a co-founder, so I set out to research what technologies and platforms I could leverage to help me with the back-end and server infrastructure.
Firebase kept popping up again and again and I began to look at it in more detail. It was then recently acquired by Google and its collection of BaaS (backend-as-a-service) modules seemed to offer the exact solution I needed to build DealCheck.
I was especially impressed with the documentation for each feature and how well all of the different technologies could be tied together to create one unified platform.
It wasn’t long before I signed up and started building the first MVP of the app.
As the only developer on the project, I had limited time and resources to spend on building the back-end, so I set out to use every Firebase feature that was available at the time to my advantage.
My goal was actually to write as little server-side code as possible and instead focus on leveraging the different Firebase modules to solve three specific challenges:
The first one was authentication and user management. DealCheck’s users needed the ability to create their accounts so they can view and analyze properties on any device (more on that later). I wanted to have the ability to sign in with email, Facebook or a Google account.
Firebase Authentication was designed specifically for this purpose and I used it to handle pretty much the entire authentication flow. Out-of-the-box, it has support for all the major social networks, cross-network credential linking and the basic account management operations like email changes, password resets and account deletions.
There was no server-side code required at all – I just needed to build the UI on the front-end.
Email, Facebook and Google sign in powered by Firebase.
And as an added benefit, Firebase Authentication ties directly into the Realtime Database product to create a declarative permissions and access control framework that’s easy to implement and maintain. This helped me make sure user data was protected from unauthorized access, but also facilitate data sharing among users.
Next up was data storage. I knew that I wanted DealCheck’s users to be able to use the app and analyze properties online, on iOS and Android. So I needed a real-time, cloud-based database solution that could sync data across any device.
Syncing data across web and mobile is not easy!
Firebase Realtime Database is a NoSQL, JSON-based database solution that was designed exactly for this purpose, and I was actually surprised how great it worked. I used the official AngularJS bindings for Firebase on the front-end to read and write to it directly from the client.
I had to do some extra work on mobile to implement an offline mode with syncing after reconnections, but all-together the code required to make everything work was minimal.
As I mentioned, Firebase Authentication tied directly to the database to facilitate access control, so I really didn’t need to do anything extra there. And I was able to set up automatic daily backups of all the data with a click of a button.
Up to now, I had written exactly 0 lines of server-side code and everything was handled by the client directly. As DealCheck’s development progressed, however, I knew that I would need a server to handle some operations that could not be done in the client.
I wasn’t very experienced with server maintenance and DevOps, but fortunately the Firebase Cloud Functions product was able to solve all of my needs. Cloud Functions are essentially single-purpose functions that can be triggered (or executed) based on a specific HTTP request or events coming from the Authentication, Realtime Database or other Firebase products.
Each function can be run once based on a specific event trigger to perform its prescribed task. You don’t have to worry about provisioning a server instance or managing load – everything is done automatically for you by Firebase.
What’s even cooler, is that Cloud Functions can access the Realtime Database and Cloud Storage buckets of the same project, performing operations on them server-side, as needed.
This is how DealCheck processes subscription payments through Stripe, validates Apple and Google Play mobile subscription receipts, integrates with third-party APIs and updates database records without user interaction.
Bringing in sales comparable data from third-party providers into DealCheck.
Cloud Functions became the “glue” that tied the entire back-end infrastructure together.
The first version of the DealCheck app was built and launched in less than 5 months with just me on the development team. I definitely don’t think that would have been possible without Firebase powering the back-end infrastructure. Maybe the project wouldn’t have ever launched at all.
While Firebase is awesome for quick MVP development, it’s definitely designed to power production applications at scale as well. As DealCheck grew from a small side-project to one of the most popular real estate apps with over 100k users, all of the Firebase products that we use scaled to support the increasing load.
Moreover, the fantastic interoperability of all Firebase modules allows us to develop and release new features much faster because of the reduced coding requirements and ease of configuration.
So next time you’re looking to build an ambitious project with a small team – take a look at how Firebase can help you reduce development time and provide a suite of powerful tools that scale as your business grows.
This is exactly how DealCheck grew from a simple idea to make property analysis easier and faster, to an app that is helping tens of thousands of people grow their wealth and passive income through real estate investing. It’s a truly awesome and fulfilling experience to see your work positively impact so many people and it wouldn’t have been possible without Firebase.
We know that the web is one of the largest platforms developed on across the globe. We want to meet developers where they are, no matter what platform that may be using.
At I/O earlier this year, we announced Firebase Performance Monitoring for web. It was our next big step in bringing the complete suite of Firebase products to the web. And just a few weeks ago, at the Firebase Summit, we announced support for web apps in Google Analytics, Cloud Messaging and Remote Config! These new features give you insight into your web users, what they are doing inside your app, and help you create personalized experiences for them - just like you already do on native. Let’s take a closer look at all that is new for web developers in Firebase.
At the heart of a successful app and business strategy lies data. Analytics helps you understand how your user base is growing, who these users are, and what actions they are taking in your app. You can then use these insights to build tailored experiences that will delight, engage and retain your users.
If you're already comfortable using Google Analytics for your native apps, the web version of Analytics should look very familiar to you. But if you are new to Firebase, there are a few key components in Analytics we want to highlight:
Analytics also has a feature called audiences, which provides a way to segment users along attributes that are meaningful to you. For example, you can create an audience comprising all the users who performed a specific sequence of events in your app. These audiences now also work for users on the web, and membership can even be evaluated across multiple platforms by setting the user_id in the Analytics SDK.
Let’s take the example of an e-commerce app and a product review feature. One important thing to track in such an app is users who started writing a product review, and then left without completing it. Using audiences, we can create a user segment that represents exactly this group of users.
Example sequence of events “Started session” > “Started review” > “Canceled review”
We can create an audience representing that sequence in the Audience builder shown in the screenshot below:
In the next two sections we will show you how to combine audiences with Remote Config & Cloud Messaging to create personalized experiences for your users.
Remote Config (now works on web) gives you the power to alter your app for any segment of users without requiring you to release a new build. For example, you can segment users by geo and date (like Christmas) and infuse a holiday color palette into your app.
Going back to the product review example, say you want to show a custom message when any user who’s part of the “Abandoned reviewers” audience opens the app. You can now use that audience as the targeting condition for your Remote Config parameters across both your web and native apps. You could even strategically roll out new features to target audiences across web and native, so you can monitor regression and roll it back if you run into any issues.
Cloud Messaging has already been available for web for quite some time. What's new is that FCM for web is now integrated with Google Analytics, which allows you to send targeted notifications to your users based on their behavior in your app. You can do this by leveraging both new web specific signals (like browser type) and Google Analytics’ custom audiences and user properties. It’s another great way for you to personalize your users’ app experiences.
What’s also new is that campaigns can be easily configured in the Firebase console. Additionally, the funnel report that tracks campaign success also now works for web campaigns. All you need to do is specify an Analytics conversion event when setting up your campaign and the report will track success automatically.
Let’s go back to our favorite product review example. Now that we have a way to identify the audience who haven’t completed their reviews, we can re-engage them with tailored notifications for users on the native app as well as users on the web app. Since the audience is already being populated by Google Analytics with these user segments, you now simply have to go to Firebase Cloud Messaging in the Firebase console and create a campaign which sends a message to these audiences on their respective platforms.
Once we’ve started our messaging re-engagement campaign, we can use Google Analytics to create closed funnels to view the performance of the engagement workflow on any specific platform.
To use any of what we just described you, take a look at the instructions for implementing and integrating the web analytics SDK here. One important note is that if you are already using analytics for your native apps, you will first need to upgrade to the full Google Analytics experience in order to access web analytics. The Remote Config SDK for web is currently in Beta and you can access it here. To get started with FCM for web, simply follow the instructions here.
We hope you’re as excited about these new web features as we are. The above example illustrates one way you can use the new web analytics features to improve your web app experience and engage users, but there are many more ways these features can be used together. We can’t wait to hear what use cases you’ve implemented in your own web apps. As always, you can reach out to us on StackOverflow and through our official support page to let us know and give us feedback. Happy Developing!
Last month, our friends at Android launched the Android Developer Challenge, and asked you to submit your ideas focused on helpful innovation, powered by on-device machine learning.
ML Kit for Firebase helps power many of these experiences, including adidas’ new in-store shopping experience for their London store. Shoppers can scan products on their phones while they are in the store and the app lets them check stock and request their size without the need for queues.
If you’ve used ML Kit for Firebase to create a great user experience, or if you’ve got a great idea for how you might use it, submit your idea by December 2! You can also check out more examples on the Android Developers blog.
Firebase Authentication provides an end-to-end identity solution for your applications, which allows you to authenticate and verify users with passwords, phone numbers and popular federated identity providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft.
Today, we are pleased to announce beta support for Sign in with Apple in Firebase Authentication. Sign in with Apple allows your users to sign in to your applications and websites using their Apple ID.
Firebase also provides FirebaseUI, a customizable drop-in authentication UI that allows developers to easily implement a variety of authentication flows using any of the authentication services supported by Firebase, including Sign in with Apple.
Support for Sign in with Apple is available in beta now, and can be integrated in your applications using the latest versions of the Firebase SDKs for iOS, Android, and the web.
Hello, Cloud Firestore developers! We wanted to let you know about some useful new querying features we've added to Cloud Firestore this week. Starting with… in queries!
in
With the in query, you can query a specific field for multiple values (up to 10) in a single query. You do this by passing a list containing all the values you want to search for, and Cloud Firestore will match any document whose field equals one of those values.
in queries are a good way to run simple OR queries in Cloud Firestore. For instance, if the database for your E-commerce app had a customer_orders collection, and you wanted to find which orders had a "Ready to ship", "Out for delivery" or "Completed" status, this is now something you can do with a single query, like so:
customer_orders
We've launched another feature similar to the in query, the array-contains-any query. This feature allows you to perform array-contains queries against multiple values at the same time.
array-contains-any
array-contains
For example, if your app had a products collection, and those documents contained an array of categories that every item belongs in, you could now look for items that were in the "Appliances" or "Electronics" category, by passing these values into a single array-contains-any query.
Note that the baby monitor document will only be returned once in your query, even though it matches with multiple categories.
These queries are also supported in the Firebase console, which gives you the ability to try them out on your dataset before you start modifying your client code.
This also seems like a good time to remind you that you can apply filters directly in the Firebase console. Neat, huh?
Security rule behavior for these queries is pretty straightforward. Cloud Firestore will look at each potential value passed in for your in or array-contains-any operation and make sure your query would be allowed for that value. If any value is not allowed, the entire query fails.
For example, if your project was set up with these security rules…
match /projects/{project} { allow read: if resource.data.status != "secret"; ... }
This request would work…
db.collection("projects").where("status", "in", ["public", "unlisted"]);
...but this entire request would fail, because it's possible that our query will return documents that are forbidden in our security rules.
db.collection("projects").where("status", "in", ["public", "unlisted", "secret"]);
Not sure why we couldn't just send you back the allowed documents? Make sure to review the 'Rules are not filters' section of this video.
While we're excited to have you unlock the potential of in queries and array-contains-any queries, you should know about a few important limitations:
I think there's a lot of exciting things you can do now with in queries, and we're looking forward to hearing what new functionality you've added to your apps. So make sure you've upgraded your client libraries to the latest versions to take advantage of the new features, check out the documentation, and happy databasing!
